Matthew 13:33-35

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Although it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.

It’s ironic that on World Communion Sunday, which dozens of denominations and millions of Christians co-celebrate as a big show of unity, the lectionary text focuses on small things. We are supposed to remember how vast the global church is, but today’s parables suggest that faith is like a mustard seed, starting very small. It is like the trace amounts of leaven that cause the dough to rise. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus showed the power of God in small things. Jesus valued the widow’s mite, her last coin. He initiated feeding 5000 with the gift of five loaves and two fish from a small boy. He did not say go forth and build megachurches, but wherever two or three gather in my name, I am in the midst of them. Small is beautiful.

However, we live in a culture that values bigger is better. Americans have larger houses, bulkier cars, bigger burgers, and thus bigger bellies than the rest of the world. Small thinking is a fault. We are expected to scale up, leverage ourselves, and amplify our voice through social media. Go big or go home. The Small Business Administration, mom-and-pop stores, or family farms don’t dominate our economy. Three or four massive corporations dominate every industry.

Some corporations are called “too big to fail,” so we must save them from failure, because they are big. Is bigger better? Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Government, Big Brother?

You know who really liked big? Rome was into big. The Empire liked scale, excess, and grandeur. Rome loved scale—armies, temples larger than stadiums, statues of emperors taller than buildings. It’s no wonder they couldn’t fathom the power of a man who said, “Remember me,” not with a giant statue, but when you break bread.

In the face of a Big Deal Empire, Jesus said, “Small is beautiful. “Mustard seeds and yeast are not just random small things. They are invasive and catalytic. How many of you grow mustard? It is like mint on steroids. Imagine an eight-foot-tall mint. You don’t need a lot of mustard. Don’t eat it like yogurt from a spoon; just spread a little bit on your sandwich. Likewise, you don’t need a gallon of yeast in your bread, unless you are prepared to bake 341 loaves. Just two teaspoons will do the job. The yeast initiates a chemical process as it feeds on sugars and produces carbon dioxide gas. The air doubles the size of the loaf, and it continues to grow even more as you bake it. It begins so small, hidden from sight. You never see the yeast at work, but you know right away if you forgot to put it in. Small things can be mighty.

This idea is great in theory, but are small things enough in practice? Big things are just so big. Injustice is so enormous, and often well-funded. Do my small efforts matter? Hatred is so frightening. How can I stand against it armed with only a still, small voice? What am I going to do with a jar of mustard seeds and a few teaspoons of yeast at my disposal? Mustard and a few slices of bread don’t even add up to a whole sandwich.

I was at a clergy meeting on Monday, where we lamented our feelings of inadequacy in the face of the enormity of our task. How do we preach a Gospel of love when algorithms give preference to divisive voices? How do we discuss the unity and interrelatedness of all people when there is no trust? How do we speak truth when we live in different universes of facts and experience? Small does not feel beautiful or powerful; it just feels terribly inadequate.

A news story about beavers rescued me. A few years ago, in the Kawuneeche Valley of Colorado—high in Rocky Mountain National Park—the land was parched. Decades of water diversion and overgrazing had dried up the wetlands. The meadows where elk once waded were bare. Streams no longer spread across the valley floor but cut deep channels, rushing water away too fast for plants, animals, or people to benefit.

A group of conservationists gathered and asked, “How do we heal this place? “They didn’t bring bulldozers or pour concrete. Instead, they built small wooden structures—beaver dam analogs—consisting of just bundles of sticks and logs woven together. They looked almost insignificant in the broad valley.

But here’s what happened: the water slowed. It pooled. It seeped back into the ground. Native plants began to return. And then, one spring, something remarkable occurred—a family of beavers returned. They took over where the humans had started. Beavers are nature’s hydrology engineers. They improved and expanded the process, patching the little wooden frames with their own mud and sticks. Soon ponds formed, willow thickets flourished, birds nested, fish returned, and the valley began to sing again. A colony of about six beavers can restore up to eight acres of land in just a few years of activity. The state of Colorado has established large refugia zones in national parks, where the work of beavers is making the forests more resilient to wildfires. Beavers are better at restoring habitats than we are, and they do it for free.

Perhaps we need to expand our view of World Communion Sunday to include not just working with other churches, but also collaborating with different species on healing and restoring the earth. When we sing that God has the whole world in God’s hands, it is not just about humans, but all of life.

The beaver project shows the power of small things that make a vital difference. Economist E.M. Schumacher wrote a book in 1973 called “Small is Beautiful.” Schumacher critiqued the dominant model of modern industrial economies, which prizes bigness, growth, and technological progress, often at the expense of people, communities, and the natural world. He argues instead for an economics of scale, sustainability, and human well-being—that “small is beautiful.”

It is tempting to think that this is pie-in-the-sky thinking from the hippie era. But here is a partial list of successes based on Schumacher’s philosophy.

• Nobody had heard of CSAs in 1973, but now there are 12,000 Community Supported Agriculture groups delivering fresh vegetables, such as tomatoes and rutabagas, to our kitchen tables weekly.
• Fair Trade Certification created more opportunities for global small businesses to sell their products.
• Sharing economy ideas include having tool libraries, co-working spaces, and car-sharing services. When the internet emerged, we could implement services like Freecycle to exchange items you no longer needed.
• Schumacher’s most significant legacy is in international development, where nonprofits have adopted smaller-scale, local projects instead of focusing on large-scale infrastructure, such as dams and power plants. Small scale makes a big difference. One nonprofit, Practical Action, has created clean power and safe water for 47 million people in rural Africa.
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One thing we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic is that our global supply chains are vulnerable. Suddenly, everyone seemed to have sourdough starters in the refrigerator to make their own bread, and we looked out for our neighbors. We realized how dependent we were on each other, and we didn’t need all the cheap goods from China. Are we slipping too quickly back to normal? Was that normal, really abnormal? We need to rebuild our local economies in ways that are sustainable, ecological, and inclusive of small businesses and a sharing economy. It’s happening here already, with projects like Rebuilding Together, which repairs homes, and the Community Refrigerator, which shares food.

We need to rethink what ‘too big to fail’ means. Planet Earth is too big to fail. On World Communion Sunday, we celebrate a table wide enough to hold the world. But notice what we have in our hands is small. Just a bit of bread. Just a sip from the cup. And yet Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

Small symbols are the pattern of the kingdom: mustard seeds, a pinch of yeast, a widow’s coin, a beaver dam woven from sticks. The world tells us we need to go big or go home. Jesus tells us that God works through what is small, hidden, and faithful.

When enough seeds are sown, when enough yeast is kneaded into the dough, when enough of us choose to live the way of Jesus, the loaf rises, the branches spread wide, the whole creation finds shelter and home. So take courage. Every prayer whispered, every meal shared, every act of kindness, every choice to live more gently with creation—these are kingdom seeds. God multiplies them in ways beyond what we see.

Come to the communion table not just remembering bread and cup, but becoming bread and cup for the world. Let us join with all people, and even all creation, in the slow, quiet, stubborn work of love. For in God’s economy, small is not just beautiful—small is powerful, small is how the kingdom comes.